


Thunderstorm

by apparitionism



Series: Regent [5]
Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F, Sort of AU?, in that B&W are together and maybe HG is still a Regent?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2014-08-18
Packaged: 2018-02-13 12:15:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2150361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparitionism/pseuds/apparitionism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The air is weighty, stagnant; it drapes itself over everything. There are no clouds yet, but a storm is unmistakably lurking just beyond the visible. Cats and dogs are probably beginning to whine about pressure changes… local news stations will be breaking into programming soon with watches and warnings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The air is weighty, stagnant; it drapes itself over everything. There are no clouds yet, but a storm is unmistakably lurking just beyond the visible. Cats and dogs are probably beginning to whine about pressure changes… local news stations will be breaking into programming soon with watches and warnings.

“You start throwing a bunch of lightning around,” Myka sighs, “and something’s bound to happen to the weather.”

She and Helena have just spent the better part of several hours chasing down a man who’d gotten hold of the key Benjamin Franklin used in his famous kite experiment. The key had been transformed into what seemed to be an overwhelmingly powerful Tesla, one that could shoot pretty dramatic lightning bolts, but it also, over time, made the person who used it build up a charge, leading to eventual electrocution. The fellow wielding it hadn’t believed them, had tried to lightning-bolt them into flames, but finally, they’d figured out that the best way to discharge him would be to touch him with an inside-out static bag. Helena had proposed putting a rock inside and throwing it at his head. Myka said, horrified, “You could kill him!” and Helena had just looked at her as if to say “and your point?” Ultimately, however, Helena created a diversion—one that ended with her complaining that given the singe marks on her favorite leather jacket, they obviously should have thrown the rock instead—while Myka tackled him, inside-out-bagged hands first.

“Well, weather,” Helena says now, and yawns.

If Myka’s tired—all that running and dodging, and then the explaining to the firefighters that the guy had invented some kind of flamethrower, and no, it seems to have been destroyed in the explosion, or perhaps you inhaled some of that foam you used to douse the flames?—then Helena must be completely spent. She’d flown in just hours before from a Regent gathering regarding Warehouse 12, something about misplaced artifacts, to join Myka for this, because Pete was going to be watching his sister receive an award… Helena said that Jane had flown out at the same time she herself had, to be there for the… banquet, probably. Myka doesn’t know, hasn’t had time to think about it, what with the lightning bolts.

She’s barely had time to think about Helena, either, and other than a brief, intense kiss when they first saw each other, they haven’t said or done anything more personal than dispute whether the possibility of fatal consequences for a party under the influence of an artifact should ipso facto move a potential plan a place or two down on the “preferred” list.

Ideally, however, that’s going to change in not too long, since they’ve found a nice little place to stay for the night. (Helena to Artie: “I disembarked from an airplane six hours ago. I refuse to ride another before tomorrow. I also refuse to spend any time in an establishment called a ‘Motel 6.’”) It always feels slightly disloyal to walk into a bed and breakfast that isn’t the one they call home—well, Helena occasionally calls it home, when she isn’t being sent or called here, there, and everywhere—and further traitorous to find it welcoming, comfortable, maybe even nicer than home.

Myka checks them in, does the talking, while Helena mostly just stands and sways. The adrenaline of the chasing, the snagging and bagging, is gone now, and she doesn’t seem to have much of in the way of energy to fall back on.

Although the furnishings in their room are antique, tasteful, chosen with great care, Myka sees that they might as well be at a Motel 6 at this point, because Helena puts her bag down and falls, completely ungracefully, onto the bed. She’s not asleep instantly, but she’s going to get there soon. Yet she mumbles, as if Myka’s the one who’s directed her to take this nap against her will, “But we have to take advantage of the time we have… and I haven’t touched you in ages…”

Myka sits on the bed beside her. “It isn’t a waste of time for me to watch you sleep.”

“Mm. Save it for the airplane ride home…”

“Save which one?”

That gets Helena’s attention—she opens her eyes again, raises her head—and she says, “Really? On an airplane? You would?”

Myka laughs a little. “I would not.”

“Oh.” This with disappointment. “All the more”—yawn—“reason I should keep from sleeping now. Because we should…” But her head’s back on the pillow before she can come up with anything lascivious to say.

And Myka’s combing fingers through the gloss of her hair now, waiting for her breathing to fall into a deeper rhythm, which it does so quickly that Myka is, she has to acknowledge, at least a little resentful.

But she’s also hungry, and later Helena will be too, so she eases her way off the bed, out of the room, to see what she can do about that.

The best idea, she is told, is a deli a few streets away. Once Myka gets there, however, she gazes at the selections in resignation. To call Helena a picky eater, as Myka will do if the subject comes up, is to gravely understate the situation. Helena is a demented eater. One day it’s “tapenade is magnificent” and the next it’s “I would not touch that mélange of hideous ingredients if you held a gun to my head.” Or: clearly, peanut butter was invented solely to degrade humankind and all its cuisine, but yes she would like some of those crackers that you have put peanut butter on, just to taste them. “If you could be a tiny bit consistent,” Myka has sighed, and Helena has sighed back, “no.” So Myka throws food at her—to date, metaphorically—and hopes something will stick. She remembers once, when they were about to board a plane, bringing her trail mix, a yogurt, an apple, a tiny box of cornflakes, two kinds of candy, a cheese stick, a cup of crudités, and a turkey sandwich, because Helena claimed to be starving. For herself, she bought a bottle of green tea. Once on board, Helena pawed through the food, then decided that tea was really what she had wanted all along. Myka had wanted to strangle her.

But instead she’d swallowed her frustration and said, “Drink the tea.”

Just as when, the last time Helena had been at the Warehouse, Pete had been acting like a five-year-old and Myka had called him on it and he’d said “what we need are some actual kids around here to take the spotlight off me” and Myka had agreed without thinking, and Helena had tensed up but hadn’t said anything and all Myka wanted to do was tell her to say it, yell or cry or whatever, but of course why would she, because that might lead to unpleasant conversations, and there is no time for unpleasantness. Just no time, though it seems like everyone but Helena and Myka is fine with how things are.

There are of course compensations, rewards for these bits of eggshell-treading. When they see each other in that first moment after an absence, when Myka feels her heart spark because Helena has _that look_ in her eyes, when they finally get to touch each other and can barely wait till they get behind a closed door. When Helena says, “I missed you,” and the way she says it makes Myka certain that no one has ever missed anyone so much, that no one else could achieve such depth of longing. When they are in harmony—when they work together, when they finish each other’s sentences, when they simply look at each other at the same instant and smile. Because they do all these things.

They are good together. And they are happy together. But they are not fully together.

But right now, since they are together, Myka doesn’t have time, doesn’t have space, to think hard about that. So at the deli, she buys a little bit of as much as she can carry. A picnic of sorts will have to suffice.

Fortunately an indoor picnic, she thinks as she feels the outdoors again, since it’s going to rain. A little zephyr of air touches her hair, lifts a strand, winds its way down her body, makes the bags in her hands rustle.

Somewhere, just beyond the horizon, some deep, uncompromising sound is growing.

But when she gets back to the room, the sight of Helena sleeping, the _idea_ of Helena sleeping, fills her. She puts down the bags, finds her book—and her time with books is almost as limited as is her time with Helena, so she feels she has to take the same care there: read the right ones, don’t get distracted, enjoy every bit that you can.

She tries to do that, but her gaze returns to Helena, over and over; she could watch her forever, if only she had the chance… but then Myka’s head tilts back, and she too is asleep.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

Myka raises her head. She blinks. The room is almost fully dark. She doesn’t know what woke her… wait, yes, she does, the rumble of thunder, now a little louder, now fading. That had to have been it.

That, or she somehow sensed that Helena was sitting cross-legged on the corner of the bed closest to the armchair. Staring.

“What are you doing?” Myka whispers. The silence is compact, dense, now that the thunder is not breaking it into manageable pieces.

“Watching you sleep,” Helena whispers back.

Myka clears her throat, speaks a little louder. “Is it raining yet? Did the storm come through?”

“Let’s see.” Helena goes to the window, pulls the curtain to the side, fiddles with the latch. The casement swings out to the side, accompanied by a rush of cooler air into the room. “No rain,” she says. “Yet. Imminent, though. Come look at the sky.”

Myka comes to stand beside Helena. She sees that the dark of the room is not from night, not fully; it is due at least as much to the baleful, charcoal heavens. She shivers.

“Cold?” Helena asks.

Myka shakes her head. “Apprehensive.”

“It’s just a storm. Just warm air, moving upwards. Forming cumulonimbus clouds.”

Myka shakes her head again. “Nothing is ever just anything. And an artifact had a hand in this one.”

“Will your apprehension have any effect on it, do you imagine?” Helena’s tone is light, but there is intent there too.

“No.”

“Then come. Let me distract you.” She touches the back of her hand against the back of Myka’s, a simple slide of contact.

Myka sees the barest flickers of light, miles away, within that dark ceiling of sky. She hears the thunder begin again its subvocal brontide, and she does not yet want to heed whatever it is trying to say.

“We should close the window,” she says.

“No,” Helena says. “We should feel this.”

The storm begins to move quickly. Temperature, pressure, humidity, everything is changing, and Myka is colder because of the air but also because Helena is working at her clothes, exposing her skin to that air, and she pulls away, starts moving to the bed, and when she turns around to see if Helena is following her—

—lightning illuminates the room, illuminates them, for the first time, and Myka sees that Helena, half out of her clothes, has paused, is staring again, just as unnervingly, but this time like Myka is her quarry. And Myka would shiver again, but this unnerving has become familiar in its way; it is not always like this between them, but sometimes it is, and it correlates with something, probably, but she has never been in sufficient possession of her senses, when it happens, to think about it, and later she can never quite conjure up the feeling, can never really put together again the conditions, the movements, the undercurrents, that distinguish this from its sweeter rendering.

But there is something sweet about this too, something precious in the concentration of Helena’s gaze, so Myka goes back to her, gets the rest of her clothes out of the way, pulls her down onto the bed, and Helena has become the one with an objective here, and her hips are moving against Myka fast, very fast, and suddenly it’s very quiet, because Helena is almost always quiet, it’s almost always in her breathing, the way she breathes out, out, out, and then suddenly in, a great immodest gasp, and for most people breathing is involuntary, but this is the only time that Helena’s ever seems to be not fully under her control.

And now that gasp, and now one more, and she is falling against Myka’s side. She will be almost insensible for a moment, and sometimes Myka loves her most in that moment—and sometimes it is in the gasp itself, and sometimes it is in every other one of the moments that run together, when they do.

Another lightning flash, and now the rain starts, and yet the thunder still takes its insistently low time.

“I don’t want to lose this,” Myka says into Helena’s hair.

“Why would we?” Helena asks. Each word is a puff of air against Myka’s neck.

“Because I want more than this.”

“With me? Or with someone else?”

More lightning, but Myka can’t see Helena’s face; she’s hiding it now, in the crook of Myka’s neck.

She waits through three Mississippis, until the thunder comes, though she doesn’t know if her intention was to _make_ Helena wait. “Of course with you,” she says. “But with _you_. Not you… holding back.”

“I wasn’t holding back at all just now,” Helena says.

“I know. Just now. But that’s the problem: it’s just now. When we’re like this.”

“I like us like this.”

“So do I. But I want to like us when we’re… not like this, too.” Now in the lightning, Helena raises her head, meets Myka’s eyes. Myka asks, “What do _you_ want?”

“More time,” Helena says immediately, loudly, against the thunder. “What do _you_ want?”

“That. And for you to talk to me.”

“About?”

But she says that with the tone Myka has never liked, and likes even less when it’s directed at her: knowing, too-ingratiating, almost condescending. It’s a performance, that tone. “You’re not really asking.”

“No,” Helena says. “I apologize. I was… evading.”

“I know.”

“I know you know.”

“I am not playing that game right now,” Myka warns. Lightning, then thunder, underscore her words.

“All right. Can I tell you that I’ll try?”

“Only if you mean it.”

“I mean it. But I’ll need your help. Because I do know that you know. Sometimes I may need your help to… convince me not to evade. And I won’t like that.”

“If you love me more than you don’t like that, I think we’ll be all right.”

“I’ll parse that at a later time. But. Myka. You may have to leave your best behavior behind as well,” Helena says.

And that’s fair. She says so to Helena, who responds, “So we have a deal of sorts?”

“I think so,” Myka says, and she is so relieved that she wants to cry.

She is so relieved, in fact, that when Helena says, “And so where were we when we left off?”, Myka genuinely has no idea what she might mean.

“Really?” Helena asks. “Because while you said you wanted more than this, I believe you also said that you wanted this as well… and since you seem to have not yet been completely… satisfied… with regard to _this_ , then I think it would be appropriate for me to… get to work.” She moves her hands over Myka’s body as she talks, long strokes of fingertips and palms. “Or maybe I should talk to you instead.” She pauses. “Or maybe I should do both. You do seem to like the sound of my voice.”

“Talk to me,” Myka begs.

“About?” Helena asks, but it’s all right now; the performance doesn’t hurt now, because it’s for Myka’s _benefit_.

“Anything,” Myka says.

“Do you know what lightning is?” Helena asks.

Myka is momentarily confused, momentarily stops moving, says, “Of course I know what lightning is,” but Helena goes on, “Opposing charges aggregate in regions of a cloud,” and her lips are moving across Myka’s collarbones, on her neck, up to her ear, where “cloud” is an exhalation of warmth, “and the atmosphere obstructs their equalization. That is, they are kept… forcibly… apart…” and Myka is torn between listening and giving in completely, “and that flash occurs when they… come together…” and _god_ , Myka wants to be but is just _not quite_ there…

“And do you know,” Helena says, her fingers practically dancing, Myka thinks as she goes higher—slow, slow, quick, quick, slow—“what thunder is?”

“Do _not_ tell me… what thunder is… I _know_ … what thunder is.” She is panting against Helena with each phrase, her exasperation now almost equal to her arousal, and she is almost sure Helena does this on purpose, to keep her wound as tightly as she possibly can right until—

“Do you indeed.” Helena’s hand stills and the lightning sparks and her eyes gleam, as if she sees everything, as if she is in the end a djinni who can control the weather, because then, right then, she pushes again, and the thunder breaks again, and so does Myka, who thinks she is crying out but does not know if she has really made any sound at all, because the thunder is so drowning that she could be shouting, she could be amplified a thousand times or more, and now Helena’s mouth is covering hers and whatever she’s saying is only for Helena’s mouth and throat and lungs.

“Are we the only people in the world?” Myka asks once she comes down, and she might really be asking.

“Right now we are.”

It is quietly perfect that the sigh of these words can carry, through air that is damp and cool but far more still, when moments ago nothing could. Rain is pattering, thunder is still rumbling, but the storm is moving away.

****

Much later, they are sitting together on the bed. Helena is digging through the bags of food. “I don’t like green olives,” she says.

Myka sighs. “Of course you don’t.”

“Nor salmon. When it is smoked.”

“Right.” Myka pulls a small box out of the bag nearest her.

“What is that?” Helena asks.

“That is for me!”

“But what is it?”

“Coconut macaroons. Don’t touch them.”

“Those contain sugar, do they not?”

“Don’t judge me. I love macaroons, and we chased a guy who was throwing lightning bolts, okay? Don’t judge me,” Myka repeats. Firmly.

“I’m not judging you.” Helena’s looking at the box like it holds the Hope Diamond. Or a pack of rainbow post-it notes.

Myka sighs. “But you want a macaroon.”

“Yes I do.”

“In fact, you’ve decided you want a box of macaroons.”

“Yes I do.”

Some battles, Myka decides, are just not worth the fighting, despite what she’s promised tonight. “Can I have _one_ at least?”

“You may have half,” Helena declares.

“Half of _one_?!”

But clearly Helena has decided something too. “Half the box,” she says. “How’s that?”

Myka leans over and kisses the perfectly shaped mouth that has so far refused perfectly fine hummus, deviled eggs, tomato tartlets, olives, and salmon. “That’s a start,” she says.

END


End file.
